Saturday, November 22, 2014

Aggressive Chimpanzees More Likely to be Fathers

Based on the genetic evidence of paternity, a new study in the Cell Press journal Current Biology suggests that male chimpanzees that treat females aggressively have more offspring over time than males that are not aggressive. This could explain why male chimpanzees are generally very aggressive to the females in the environment.
"I'm not that aggressive!"
For the study, Joseph Feldblum of Duke University along with his colleagues looked at a community of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe National Park. This park has been under close observation so the researchers knew who the biological fathers were of nearly all the chimps born in the community based on parental genetic tests. The findings showed that males had a higher reproductive success when they showed long term patterns of intimidation. The study shows what might be the first genetic evidence of sexual coercion as an adaptive strategy in social mammals.
This article is extremely interesting but readers should be warned that this does not have explanations for mating behavior in human society because the way a chimpanzee society is ran is different from how human society is. So although nice guys finish last in a chimpanzee community, it does not explain the idea that nice guys finish last in human society if you believe that. Also do not treat females aggressively just because chimps do.

Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141113122939.htm

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